


little more than whispers

by ottermo



Series: As Prompted [9]
Category: Humans (TV)
Genre: F/F, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-13
Updated: 2017-01-13
Packaged: 2018-09-17 07:49:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 935
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9312248
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ottermo/pseuds/ottermo
Summary: Fills 16, 17 and 19 for 'the' Humans fanwork challenge on tumblr. (Rescue/Crime/Smile)





	

**Author's Note:**

> if you follow me on tumblr, you've probably already been subjected to these, I'm just transferring them to here because my ao3 account was looking annoyingly under-representative of the amount of Humans obsessing I do on a daily basis.
> 
> here's a few little ficlets I'm posting together because they're short. we got some Miaura, we got some Mattie, we got some Niska doing brain surgery. all written before series 2 aired so they're canon divergent (although rereading them today I noticed that I lowkey predicted something that did sorta happen. I forgot I even wrote about it though so I didn't get to enjoy feelin like a prophet...'til now)

 

 

 

**rescue**

It has been one day, three hours and fourteen minutes since Mia turned off her pain.

She hates doing it, feels somehow lessened by the mere fact that she can. But the truth is, without a repair kit to patch up the damage or a power supply handy, pain is an unnecessary drain on her. Since the option exists, the only sensible thing is to use it. 

In five or six hours, she will have no choice but to enter power saving mode, and wave goodbye to any hope of an initiative-based escape. Realistically, there must be electricity somewhere in the building, but in the room they are keeping her in, there’s no plug, not even a light bulb, nothing. This, Mia thinks, might be a good thing. They aren’t worried about her entering terminal shut down, so they must not know who she really is. Anybody who really wanted her would make sure she didn’t reach full drain. 

This is the glimmer she holds on to. It’s not much of a hope, but it isn’t nothing, either: if they don’t know who she is, then they won’t have covered their tracks. She will be found. 

Before it is too late. 

The sixth hour falls into the seventh, and Mia closes her eyes. In power saving mode, thought is little more than whispers, vague notions. Hope is one of them, still.

Later - thirteen hours and twenty-nine minutes later - a touch brings her out. The darkness Mia wakes to has a face, and the face has a voice. 

“There you are. You had us all worried, you know.”

The voice has a name. “Laura,” Mia says, and five percent becomes four, but she doesn’t worry about that now. Soon, there will be power, but for now, the name of her rescuer is sweet to her lips. _Laura. You found me._

_I knew you would._

 

 

 

**crime**

“It’s only breaking and entering if we break something,” Mattie says confidently, although even she is feeling slightly uneasy. “Otherwise it’s just entering.”

“Yeah, but without permission,” Toby points out. 

“If they were here,” she continues, “we’d ask permission. But we don’t know when they’re getting back. And Leo needs that file _tonight_.” 

“I _know_ ,” Toby says impatiently, “I came with you, didn’t I? You can stop trying to convince me. I’m just _saying._ You can’t pretend it’s not still a crime to go in there.” 

“Are we technically talking theft, as well?” Harun pipes up. “I mean, if you’re just gonna take that file…” 

Mattie huffs. “It’s not _theirs_. It was Doctor Millican’s. And he’s not here to want it back, so  _technically_ , no, it’s not theft. It doesn’t belong to anyone.”

“What if it’s not even there anymore?” Toby wonders. “I mean, won’t they have cleared out everything when….”

“Odi said it’s hidden in a drawer with a false bottom. I bet they haven’t found it.”

Of course, there’s some element of guesswork still, because although he’s now in much better control of his memories, Odi wasn’t able to tell them _which_ drawer the file was stashed in. But Mattie’s sure she can work it out. Even if she can’t, there are three of them to conduct a thorough search. 

“Right,” she says, looking at the two boys seriously. “Here we go, then.” 

She can only hope that Max’s lock-picking lessons have paid off. 

 

 

 

**smile**

Niska’s hands, unpracticed but certain, have done all they can do for the time being. She has followed her father’s logs to the letter, as far as the two cases overlap, improving or substituting where they don’t. But now it’s just a matter of seeing what happens - if it’s worked. If her confidence was really as well-founded as she’d let the Hawkinses believe.

“How long until we know?” asks Mattie in a hushed tone, standing by the bedside with her mother. She addresses her question to Leo, Niska thinks, but he defers to the rest of them, being the only one who hadn’t had to endure this waiting period, last time.

“Leo woke up very quickly, once the last grafts were installed,” Mia says, her voice warm but her face drawn with worry all the same. “But we don’t know if that was normal. It might take longer.”

She means the doubt to be comforting, to let them know that there is still a chance past the first ten minutes, that they shouldn’t give up hope. But Niska can tell that her uncertainty only reminds them how much is still unknown about this process, that Leo, as the only precedent, is not any kind of guarantee.

The four Hawkinses stand in a solid line of togetherness, with Laura holding on tight to the pale hand extending out from under the blanket. Mia and Leo are on the opposite side of the bed, and Niska vaguely wonders if Leo remembers anything about his own time as a patient in this room - this _workshop_ , to give it its proper, more experimental-sounding name. He had been lying on the very same bed, when their father had finally removed the blocks and let him see the world again.

There’s a silence in the workshop now that no-one dares break, in case it will, impossibly, affect the patient.

Privately Niska wonders if they ought to talk, ought to let the world’s second human-synth wake into a world which unifies both species in sound, in conversation; a reminder that this joining is, though unnatural, not unbearable.

But in the end, it is into the quiet, then into the sound of her mother’s relieved sobs, that Sophie wakes, and smiles.

 

 

 

 


End file.
